From my own experience, and having read
http://producingoss.com/en/index.html some months back I am sensitive
to your point, and I can appreciate why you might point it out.
The forum I am considering has not yet started so it's not a question
of forking now but of making sure an ability to fork is present,
should it occur. (It will.)
I could just create multiple google/yahoo groups but then the
administrative duplication seems silly when ultimately the goal is to
keep the community cohesive as a whole while letting SIGs happen.
e.g. If your interest is hardware, you might 'subscribe' to news,
general, and hardware. Another might be software oriented. But both
want to step into the 'newsroom' together.
So, the community could vote to create a SIG, or not, but couldn't
even vote if the ability to create the SIG weren't present in the
first place.
(I'm looking for more than a simple mailing list, too.)
Richard Weait wrote, On 09/30/2009 1:34 PM:
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 4:49 PM, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca> wrote:
>> Anyone know of a free web forum equivalent to Google/Yahoo Groups?
>>>> Yahoo groups appears to have more functionality than Google, but neither
>> appear to have the concept of 'sub-forum' (sub-groups?).
>> Nope.
>> I can offer some experience from the OSM community though. Wait! I'm
> not going to ramble on about how amazing OpenStreetmap is or why you
> should participate... Ooops. Sorry.
>> Right. Experience from OSM.
>> There are dozens of OSM mailing lists for sub groups, for different
> languages, special interests, etc. One predictor of a successful
> branch group is the reason for requesting the new group.
>> If a sub-group wishes to have a new list so they aren't drowned out by
> discussion on the main list, do not create the sub-list.
>> If a sub group is so prodigious that they threaten to drown out the
> main group, create a sub-list for them.
>> There are other issues as well, but watch this one before you divide
> your community into some many sub-groups that they all fail for lack
> of critical mass.